I have found ‘stop translating in your head’ to be bad advice, not because you should be translating in your head, but because as you acquire the language you will naturally stop doing this. As a beginner you have no choice but to tranlaste in your head, because you have zero mental model of the new language. I similarly don’t like the ‘you should be reading more extensively than intensively’, because beginners can’t read extensively, and as they continue to read intensively it naturally starts to become extensive.
The sentence mode translation is simply another tool for comprehension, and one especially good for beginners. You aren’t going to hinder acquisition by using it unless you for some reason ignore the original language and go right to the translation.
As for your first paragraph I find this dubious beyond just the ‘outside tools will somehow hinder comprehension’. First of all I don’t think it works, at least not well, if your target language is very different from your native language. Jumping unaided into a romance language as an english speaker is doable, not sure if efficient, but doable. Jumping into a non-indo-european language is nigh impossible. Not to mention it requires finely tailored courses that do not exist for most languages, and massive ammount of easily accessible beginner content.
“The best methods are therefore those that supply ‘comprehensible input’ in low anxiety situations, containing messages that students really want to hear. These methods do not force early production in the second language, but allow students to produce when they are ‘ready’, recognizing that improvement comes from supplying communicative and comprehensible input, and not from forcing and correcting production.”
Stephen Krashen
****“best method”; not only method.
****“allow students to produce when they are ‘ready’,” Production is part of the overall journey.
In the quote from Stephen Krashen’s book Principles and Practice in Second Language Acquisition I quoted above, it said:
The best way, and perhaps the only way, to teach speaking, according to this view, is simply to provide comprehensible input.
He is explicitly saying that he thinks extensive reading/listening (i.e. “comprehensible input”) may be the only, single, one way to improve speaking. If “perhaps the only way” does not mean “perhaps the only method,” I don’t know what does.
Production is a part of the overall journey, as you say, but it doesn’t mean that it actually is the cause for improvement. Stephen Krashen, as in the statement from his book I quoted in the above post, believes “speaking fluency cannot be taught directly.” In other words, if you want to improve speaking, speaking is not how you do it, according to him. Again, it goes back to his view that “comprehensible input” is how you improve speaking.
In your quote, he mentions it’s comprehensible input improving production:
I.e. Stephen Krashen believes that the only way to improve your speaking is through comprehensible input. That’s why it’s crazy that Steve Kaufmann says he believes Stephen Krashen’s Input Hypothesis, while at the same time constantly saying “to get good at speaking, you need to speak a lot.” You can’t believe both at the same time.
I’m just going to put this out there…
I don’t think any language learner gives a rip about taking Stephen Krashen literally, or whether he’s bunked or debunked.
CI via LingQ is a great way to learn a language compared to the alternatives, and it has both strengths and weaknesses.
Going by the fact that Steve Kaufmann’s interview with Stephen Krashen has 180,000 views, I would say at least some people “give a rip” about the fella. It’s definitely one of Steve’s more popular interviews.
@asad100101, for instance, linked to a speech by Stephen Krashen in this thread above which has over a million views.
In an ideal world, we would stop talking about a 40-year-old theory which shouldn’t have been published in the first place, as the author should have realised it was wrong before publishing it. But alas, the spreading of misinformation.